The present invention relates to a hospital communication system, and particularly, to a communication system having a bed status system for providing patient bed information to attending medical personnel.
Nurses and other attending staff in a hospital ward or hospital wing work under conditions involving high pressure, stress and long hours. These caregivers must remain alert to respond to patient needs, in both emergency and non-emergency situations. Due to economic practicalities and the ever-increasing costs of medical care, it is necessary to make the most efficient use of nurses and staff on call in a hospital wing, particularly at night when nurse and staff levels are maintained at a minimum.
On the other hand, a desire to optimize the efficiency of nurse and staff personnel is of secondary importance relative to the primary objective, that of providing a high level of medical care to a patient. If nurse and staff levels are reduced for the sake of efficiency without any corresponding simplification of duties and responsibilities, the level of patient care will decrease. Therefore, it is desirable to maximize the efficiency of nurses and staff on call in a hospital wing, but to do so in a manner which does not increase the work load or stress levels of these professional caregivers nor decrease the level of patient care.
One approach to maximizing the efficiency of nurses and other hospital staff involves the use of a location and identification system to continuously monitor the various locations of these persons. For instance, White U.S. Pat. No. 4,275,385 discloses a personnel locating system where individuals to be located wear infrared transmitters, and each transmitter transmits a pulse-coded signal which corresponds to the identity of the wearer. A number of other U.S. Patents also disclose personnel locating or monitoring systems which purport to improve upon the system disclosed in the White patent. However, these improvements relate to the mechanics of signal detection, or the organization, maintenance and retrieval of stored information for making reports. These patents do not disclose a communication system which helps nurses and staff do their jobs more efficiently and more effectively. Furthermore, even with such automated communication systems which allow retrieval of information at a central, remote location, certain traditional tasks have still been handled locally at the patient location and have required the hospital personnel to physically be present with the patient to visually observe the patient or the status of the equipment utilized by the patient.
One such traditional task of hospital nurses and staff is to monitor the condition or status of a large number of hospital patient beds. Currently available hospital beds are equipped with a variety of mechanical and electrical systems related to patient care, and these systems must be monitored to ensure proper care. For example, the condition of the mattress surface as well as the shape of that surface must often be monitored by the attending staff to ensure that the patient is in the proper position and will not suffer from skin breakdown or other ailments due to an extended time spent in the bed. Furthermore, it is often necessary to know whether the patient is actually In the bed or has exited the bed, despite the request of the attending personnel. Still further, various other mechanical bed conditions must also be monitored to determine that they are working properly or are in a desired state. With conventional beds, the status of the bed is revealed at either headboard or footboard consoles or in a console located on the wall inside of a patient room. Therefore, monitoring the bed status requires attendance of personnel within the room to locally view and interpret the various bed consoles. Not only is such a task time consuming, but certain bed status conditions, such as whether the patient is still in the bed, should be responded to as soon as possible rather than at some predetermined interval that corresponds with scheduled patient visits by the attending personnel.
Therefore, it is an objective of the invention is to improve the overall effectiveness of hospital personnel in monitoring the status of hospital beds.
It is a further objective of this invention to continuously monitor a patient bed status such that hospital personnel have instant access to bed status information.
It is still another objective of the invention to simplify interaction with and retrieval of bed status information from a hospital communication system, to thereby reduce stress levels of nurses and staff.
It is also an objective of this invention to assist nurses and staff in achieving optimum efficiency in monitoring and utilizing a large number of patient beds in a hospital wing.
It is a further objective to facilitate the ready availability of record-keeping information and identification of beds for maintenance of the beds and necessary retrofitting, as well as for accounting purposes for billing a patient during occupancy of the bed.
The invention achieves the above-stated objectives. The bed status system of the invention indicates to attending personnel the status of a number of different patient beds for improved care to a patient and more efficient utilization of the beds. In a preferred embodiment of the invention, the bed status system operatively connecting a bed-monitored interface board to the in-place patient/nurse communication system of a hospital, to selectively retrieve, store and display, at a remote location, information conveyed to the station from the bed interface board, provides bed status information to locations remote from the bed, such as at a master station or a nursing unit station. Thus, medical personnel, maintenance personnel and accounting personnel do not have to physically view the bed to determine information about the bed and the patient therein, thereby increasing their efficiency. Furthermore, the ability of medical personnel to more efficiently monitor the bed status of a patient bed reduces their tasks and allows them to focus upon patient care in a less stressful environment. The system provides instantaneous retrieval of unique identification information about the bed and provides status information related to the position of the bed, the configuration of the mattress surface, the status of the safety systems on the bed as well as the current state of various patient care systems integrated with the bed.
More specifically, the bed status system of the invention utilizes a plurality of bed condition signal generators which are coupled to a patient bed. The signal generators are physically or electrically coupled to a variety of different mechanisms and systems on the bed to indicate the operational status of those mechanisms or systems. The signal generators generate bed condition input signals indicative of one or more detected bed conditions, and are electrically coupled to a bed interface board which includes a processor. The interface board contains bed identification information about the particular bed being monitored, and is preferably permanently carried by the frame of the bed, such as in the headboard or footboard of the bed. Thus, the information from the interface board is unique to the particular bed. Identification information from the interface board identifies the model type of the bed, as well as other identification information, such as the serial number of the bed and its functional capabilities. In that way, attending personnel are able to determine which types of beds are in which locations, and what functions the beds are capable of providing. The bed interface board, in turn, is connected over a serial datalink to a system interface unit which is preferably positioned or mounted in a hospital room or other appropriate location, such as within a wall close to where the patient beds are located. The system interface unit provides communication capabilities between the bed board and a remote processing station, such as a master station of an in-place hospital nurse call system.
The processor of the interface board receives signals from one or more of the bed condition signal generators. In one embodiment of the invention, the signal generators are hardwired directly to the interface board and processor. In an alternative embodiment, the bed condition signals from the signal generators may be pre-processed into an information message which is sent over a data bus of an operating network. Upon receiving the bed condition input signals, the interface board processor creates 10 byte messages to be serially sent over the datalink between the bed interface board and the wall interface unit. The messages are then processed to determine the status of the bed. When the bed status system of the invention is integrated with a patient/nurse communication system, the wall interface unit forwards the messages to a local patient station which then forwards the messages to a master station which is located remote from the bed at a centralized nurse or staff area. The bed conditions may be indicated by visual indicators such as LEDs or may be displayed on a computer screen along with other patient and personnel information. Certain messages contain the various bed identification information, and therefore, the various conditions of the bed are linked to the type of bed being monitored and to the location of the bed to allow for a more efficient response to a bed status message. The bed information may be stored and readily retrieved by the master station.
During operation of the bed status system, one of two types of messages is sent between the bed interface board and the wall interface unit, i.e., a status message or a bed data message. Status messages are sent back and forth between the bed interface board and the wall interface unit to apprise one or the other of the sending devices of the status of the last message that was sent from that device. Status messages provide verification to each device or node in the system that the other device or node is operating properly and receiving the messages which are sent. Bed data messages are sent by the bed interface board and include information such as the type of bed associated with the interface board, the identification number of the bed, the available bed status conditions which may be sensed by the interface board and the state of those bed status conditions.
More specifically, each bed data message that is sent from the bed to the wall interface unit is of appropriate length and includes a plurality of data fields which indicate the type of message being sent, (i.e. status message or bed data message), the length of the message being sent, the actual data of the message (such as status data or bed data), and a field for verifying that the message was received by a node exactly the same as it was sent by the sending node such as the bed interface board. Status messages indicate either to the bed interface board or the wall interface unit that the data message last sent by that interface device was either properly received or was not properly received, in which case the transmitting interface device should re-transmit the message. In accordance with the principles of the invention, other status messages indicate that a bed interface board has been reset in which case the information such as the bed type and the bed identification information must be re-transmitted. The system of the present invention further utilizes an all-zero status message which acts as a handshake between the bed interface board and the wall interface unit when there are currently no bed data messages to be sent.
In a preferred embodiment of the invention, the bed interface board provides bed data regarding specific functional features of the bed. Specifically, the bed interface board indicates in a bed data message whether the patient exit detection system of the bed is armed; whether the mattress is in a prevention mode to prevent skin breakdown; whether the bed is positioned at its lowest position; whether the brake of the bed is set; whether one or more of the bed footrails are unlatched; and whether one or more of the bed headrails are unlatched. In accordance with the principles of the invention, the status system is expandable and may be readily adapted to monitor a variety of additional bed features.
The bed status system of the invention is preferably integrated into a patient/nurse communication system to facilitate prioritizing and responding to the bed status information. Therefore, the present invention provides bed status information to attending hospital personnel at a location remote from the patient bed to effectively eliminate the necessity of physically viewing the bed to determine its status. Further, the information is provided in conjunction with patient/nurse communication information for immediate and more efficient response to the bed conditions by the attending personnel. Also, bed status information may be stored by the patient/nurse communication system to be retrieved at a later date. Furthermore, the various costs associated with training personnel to use the system are reduced since bed status information may be easily accessed by someone familiar with the currently available patient/nurse communication system. The bed status system thereby promotes optimum efficiency in a hospital wing.
The above and other objectives and advantages of the present invention shall be made apparent from the accompanying drawings and the description thereof.